


before those hands pulled me from the earth

by anneweaver



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, but steve is alive and that's all that matters, i don't even know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 08:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11332293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneweaver/pseuds/anneweaver
Summary: By the time she’s closest to civilization, she realizes he’s not going to survive with her feeble attempts at healing his wounds, and he’s not going to survive with whatever is available in the city. These wounds, they were product of pure evil, they were Ares’ doing, and there was only one place she knew of where he could be helped.





	before those hands pulled me from the earth

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Like Real People Do by Hozier

It isn’t until she has defeated Ares and she’s surrounded by fire and smoke that she finally rises, hope building in her chest, telling her that not all had been lost. Not yet.

It’s that hope that makes her follow the trail of orange left in the sky, leading her into the forest like her North star, showing her the way. It’s that hope that makes her search the forest, tirelessly, for hours and hours on end until she finds him perched atop a small tree, his frail body covered in the broken fabric of the parachute that ultimately would have saved his life. He was as broken as the fabric, blood seeping from his skin, face contorted in pain even in his unconsciousness, his clothes all dissolved from the acid.

She doesn’t need to make much effort to drag him down from the tree, cradling his broken body as gently as she can. Seeing him like this hurts her deeply, but she knows better now, she knows to channel that hurt into fire, strength, something that can help him. So she settles him down on the cold, dark ground, covers his body with the parachute fabric, and cradles him up again, his body melting into her arms. He’s not awake but he’s still breathing, which is about the most beautiful sound she has ever heard, and his head rests on her shoulder as she carries him away from the burning rubble of the plane and the gas.

She walks and walks, for what feels like days, trying her best not to move too sharply to avoid disturbing him. Every once in a while she stops, puts him down and cleans his wounds as best as she can with what’s available to her in the forest; by the time she’s closest to civilization, she realizes he’s not going to survive with her feeble attempts at healing his wounds, and he’s not going to survive with whatever is available in the city. These wounds, they were product of pure evil, they were Ares’ doing, and there was only one place she knew of where he could be helped.

With one last deep breath, she scoops him up again, places one soft kiss on his clammy forehead, and walks again.

-o-

What he remembers most is the pain. It was searing, settling in every part of his body, crushing his chest, wouldn’t let him breathe or open his eyes or move. It was the most intense pain he had felt in his lifetime, the kind of pain that made you wish for death; it felt like Hell, because nothing in Heaven or Earth would ever feel like this. So he prayed, he wished for death, he wished for the pain to stop.

But he also remembered the cold of the metal against his body, the fabric covering his skin, the arms that carried him for miles, the soft hands tending to his wounds, and the gentle lips on his forehead. He remembered the saltwater on his body, the helpless screams that left from his chest when the salt licked the gaping wounds; he remembered the anguished voice pleading with him, asking “how can I help you?” with a broken voice, and the drops of saltwater on his cheeks that didn’t come from the sea, this much he knew. He remembered the relief that came next, once his body got used to the salt; he remembered gladly the feeling of being surrounded by cold water and cold arms. And this time, he prayed for this to never stop, he wished to remain surrounded by water, because at least then he would not feel so much pain. 

When he finally stops moving, he has finally made peace with his situation. Constantly moving and constantly in pain, once he’s back on dry land, he has stopped praying and stopped wishing and stopped thinking altogether; his existence has become all about letting himself be carried from one place to the next.

He’s only vaguely aware that he’s stopped moving because his clothes no longer cling to his body and he’s lying on something soft and warm, not cold and strong like the arms that carried him. He hears different voices, none of them as pained as the one he had started to think he’d only dreamed once, and this is how he finally knows he’s going to live.

“Who did this to him?” Someone asks, a woman, as she cuts his clothes in a methodical manner, her voice and her hands clinical and detached.

“It was all Ares’s doing,” someone else says, then, and he recognizes that voice, knows he would recognize it anywhere, even in death. Now that it doesn’t sound as anguished, he knows who it is, and the instant relief he feels at knowing she was alive and she had found him is mixed with guilt at knowing it had been him who caused her so much pain.

“Diana–” someone else says, but doesn’t speak for long.

“You have to help him, mother,” Diana says, her voice breaking in the last word, and there it is again, the voice he thought he’d dreamed. Pain shoots through his body again, but this time it isn’t physical.

“You know how it works.”

“He sacrificed himself to save thousands of people, mother. I– I thought I’d lost him, but,” a pause and some movement, then, “you have to help him. I can’t, I tried but I can’t, that’s why I brought him here.”

The silence that follows is almost deafening.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

-o-

She is always next to him, her brave, reckless man. She keeps watch while the healers work on him, tend to his wounds, ease his pain, and though not being able to help him frustrates her, she does what she can do and she does not leave his side for a moment. She watches his face grow less and less contorted by the pain, his wounds less open, his hair longer. He cannot open his eyes yet, let alone sit or eat, so she can almost count all his bones, his flesh pale and his form smaller, weak.

But if she had learned something from what they'd been through, it was that love, more than hate, could heal, and so the anger she feels at the people who did this is instead directed towards him in the form of love. She holds his hand and wipes the sweat from his forehead and tells him with every movement and every action and every breath,  _ I love you, I love you, I love you. _

She hopes with all her might that he knows it, she hopes that he will wake up soon from his half-existence of his so she can tell him in person.

Healers and warriors alike all come by, awaiting to hear the story of her fight against Ares, how she finally defeated the god of war, and she recounts the story every time, always remembering to add the small detail about his sacrifice, adamant that if she had to become part of their history books, he should too. He had told her “I can save today, you can save the world” as if his sacrifice was somehow rendered less important by her mere existence, but for her, saving the day and saving the world were equals and he was no less of a hero in her eyes. 

When she tells this to her mother, she only purses her lips and nods once.

“I understand,” she tells her daughter. “You think that I don’t, but I do.”

“But you still see him as lesser,” Diana points out. “You hate him.”

Hippolyta shakes her head imperceptibly. “Hate is a strong word, my child, one I do not take lightly,” she says, and sits next to her daughter. “I do not hate him, I could not. He brought you back to me, after all.”

Diana looks at her mother. “Then what is it, mother?”

“He isn’t the problem, Diana, it’s what his kind represents. The war and the death and the grief that men bring along, that is something I do not want in our home.”

It isn’t until her mother says that that Diana realizes her previous concept of home is now hollow, incomplete. It is the sea and the sun and her sisters and, yes, it’s her land, where she grew up and learned how to fight and how to love. But it is also the man lying next to her, the man for whom she fought, the man she loved and who loved her in return.

She looks at her mother, her eyes burning with quiet defiance. “He is none of these things,” she says, doesn’t say  _ he’s home _ . 

-o-

When he finally opens his eyes, all he sees is darkness, and for a second he thinks he has gone blind; the panic rising in his chest recedes when he turns and sees Diana’s face a few inches from his, and he knows his imagination could never come up with such beauty, and his memories definitely would have never done her face so much justice.

She looks at him so softly, smiling so brightly, that his eyes fill with tears. When she speaks, it is as soft as her gaze on his own and her hands on his shoulder.

“Steve,” she says, barely above a whisper, moves one hand to rest on his cheek, her thumb wiping away one stray tear and lingering on his cheekbone. His body is still sore, from the pain and from the days of stillness, but his hand still finds hers and his fingers curl around her wrist, index and middle finger pressing lightly just below her thumb, her pulse a soothing rhythm in the current chaos of his mind. 

He’s still too weak to speak, but he clears his throat nonetheless, tries to make an effort to say something, anything to this woman who had saved him in more ways than one; she doesn’t let him, places one soft finger on his lips and soft lips on his forehead.

“You’re still weak,” she tells him, lips hovering over his skin, hand brushing some stray locks away, “just rest.”

“Diana,” he croaks out, lips dry and cracked against her finger, and it’s the only thing he manages to say before his lungs and throat are giving in, sending him into a violent coughing fit.

The last thing he remembers, before he blacks out again, is Diana’s infinitely soft voice reassuring him, and a whisper of “I’ll be here when you wake up” against his cheek.

-o-

Days go by and he’s awake for longer periods of time, manages to drink plenty of water and eat some broth at least once every day, his wounds hurt less and look better, and he sounds stronger whenever he speaks—which isn’t often at first, his throat and lungs too damaged from the smoke, speaking taking more effort and causing more pain than necessary.

And every day she sits by his side, watches him turn back into her Steve more and more with each passing day: the man she had met back then, her beautiful, brave, stubborn Steve, who decided to sacrifice himself to save thousands of people and who decided, a few days into this ordeal, to conquer the very act of speaking, as difficult and painful as it was. 

Still, the brokenness takes its toll, and more often than not he wakes up gasping for hair, hands clutching at his chest and face, checking for open, oozing wounds that are no longer there. Every time she offers a glass of water and smooths down his hair, whispers reassurances in his ear, holds his hand and holds  _ him  _ until he stops shaking and he falls asleep again, face buried in her neck. The healers around them never say anything, never even look at them, as if every nightmare is a private moment, meant only to be shared between the two of them; after all, they are the only ones who know the horrors of war, who lived through them, beyond the scary stories passed along the warriors. 

Some time later, he can stand, and soon after he can walk around the cave, Diana always a few steps behind him, ready to catch him if he were to lose his balance (which he never does, but the gesture brings him some much needed safety); his footing soon becomes steadier, his knees not as shaky, and one morning, after a rare dreamless night, he decides he wants to go outside.

“I’m going mad down here,” he declares, not looking at her face, “and the lack of sunlight is making me feel even more dead.”

“You’re not dead,” she points out, and it comes out less as a rebuttal of his statement and more as reassurance, both for him and for herself. He sees through it and takes her hand.

“That I’m not,” he agrees. “You saved me.”

She doesn’t reply, though she wants to argue that he saved himself; instead, she takes a deep breath and offers her arm for him to take, silently agreeing with his petition. He realizes what she’s doing and smiles, the first real smile she’s seen in the weeks since she brought him back; then, he places one hand on her arm and stands, the concentration on his face visible as he tries to overcome the weakness in his legs, and she’s so proud and filled with love that, for a second, she feels she might burst.

They walk, hand in hand, outside of the cave.

-o-

The sunlight on his face feels like a blessing, almost as much as the woman holding his hand. They sit on the sand for a while, simply enjoying the sun and the ocean breeze, and Diana tells him stories about her childhood, spent in this beach and wishing to be a warrior like her aunts and her mother. She admits, then, that now that she’s seen war and it has hit her home, she can’t see why she ever wanted to be a part of it.

“I want to defend my people and I want to do what’s right,” she says softly, as he looks at her, “but if I could choose, now… now that I know what it’s like, I would choose peace a thousand times over.”

“I know,” he says, one hand on hers, holding on tightly. She leans in and rests her head on his shoulder, looks at the horizon before her, the sun setting and painting the sky a shade of orange that was reminiscing of the orange she’d seen then, too reminiscing to be comfortable.

“But it’s never going to end, is it? The war.” She asks, though she already knows the answer. Steve shakes his head and wraps one arm around her shoulders, pulls her closer to him.

“I don’t think so, no.”

Some time later, after the sun has set and moonlight reflects on the ocean, she stands up, walks slowly to the edge of the water. He decides not to follow her and, instead, leans on a nearby rock and looks at the shape of her, windswept hair and eyes shining with the moonlight, beaming at him; her bare feet are treading the water, and when she extends one arm towards him, he walks to where she is, takes her hand, and lets himself be pulled to the sea for a moment.

When she pulls him to her and their lips meet, softly, they are finally at peace. Around them, the sea is calm.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I am obsessed with this movie and Hozier's self-titled album might as well be renamed "Wonder Woman, dir. Patty Jenkins (2017)", what can I say. Thanks to Madeline for letting me scream at her as soon as I walked out of the movie theater, and to Shay and Cindy as always. #SteveLives
> 
>  
> 
> I left the ending kind of open bc I'm sure I'm coming back to write a lil sequel but who knows...


End file.
